The Stolen Heir: A Novel of Elfhame (The Stolen Heir, 1)

I am dragged through the halls and brought not to the prisons, as I supposed I would be, but to the bedroom where I readied myself for the revel. My bag is still on the hook where I left it, the comb Oak used still on the dresser. Revindra, the rose-haired knight, pushes me inside hard enough that I hit the floor with my shoulder. Then she kicks me in the stomach, twice.

I curl around the pain, gasping. I reach into the folds of my dress, hand closing over the scissors I stole from Habetrot’s rooms.

Here is what I learned in the Court of Teeth. It seemed, in the beginning, that fighting back would only bring me further pain. That’s the lesson they wanted me taught, but soon I realized I would be hurt anyway. Better to hurt someone else when I had a chance. Better to make them hesitate, to know it would cost them something.

Revindra is wearing armor, so when I go for her, I slash where she is most unprotected—her face.

The sharp edge slices her cheek, down over the corner of her lips. Her eyes go wide, and she pulls away from me with a wild shout. Her hand goes to her mouth, wiping and staring at her fingers as though it were impossible for the wetness she’s feeling to be her own blood. Another knight grabs my throat, holding me in place while a third slams my wrist on the ground until I let go of the scissors with a cry of pain.

It would be an insult to be stabbed by them, I recall Jack of the Lakes saying. I hope he’s right.

When Revindra kicks me in the back of the head, I don’t bother trying to muffle my anguished moan. In the Court of Teeth, they liked to hear me scream, cry out, and howl. Enjoyed seeing bruises, blood, bone. I’ve embarrassed Revindra, twice over. Of course she’s angry. There is no profit in giving her anything but what she wants.

At least until she gives me another opening.

“Whatever your punishment is, I will ask to be the one to administer it, little worm,” she tells me. “And I will do so with lingering thoroughness.”

I hiss from the floor, scuttling back when she comes toward me again.

“See you very soon.” Then she goes out, the other knights with her.

I crawl to the bed and curl up on it miserably.

I should have kept my temper, and I know it. If it gives me satisfaction to cause pain, that means only that I am more akin to Lady Nore and Lord Jarel than I like to suppose.

Seeking distraction from the agony in my wrist and my side, seeking a reason not to think about Oak’s expression when he took his old gaming piece or to gauge the likelihood I will be executed in one of the ways that so horrified Gwen, I reach into my pocket for her phone. The glass isn’t cracked. It lights up as my fingers travel over it, but there is no message from Hyacinthe. As I stare at the glowing screen, I think of my home number, the one my unparents made me repeat over and over back when Bex was Rebecca and I was their child.

We are far enough underground that the signal is very faint. A single little bar, occasionally two when I tilt it at an uncertain angle. I punch in the number. I do not expect it to ring.

“Hello.” My unmother’s voice is staticky, as though farther away than ever. I shouldn’t have done this. I have to try to be emotionless when they come to hurt me again, and my unmother’s voice makes me feel too much. It would be better to disconnect from everything, to float free from my body, to be nothing in an endless night of nothing.

But I want to hear her in case I never have a chance again.

“Mom?” I say so softly that I imagine she doesn’t hear me, the connection being as bad as it is.

“Who’s this?” she asks, voice sharp, as though she suspects me of playing a joke on her.

I don’t speak, feeling sick. Of course this must seem like a wrong number or a prank. In her mind, she has no other daughter. I stay on the line another moment, though, tears burning the back of my eyes, the taste of them in my throat. I count her breaths.

When she doesn’t hang up, I put the phone on the bed, speaker on. Lie down beside it.

Her voice quavers a little. “Are you still there?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Wren?” she asks.

I hang up, too afraid to know what she might say next. I would rather hold her saying my name to my heart.

I press the palm of my hand to the cold stone of the wall to ground myself, to try to remember how not to feel again.

I don’t know how long I lie there, but long enough to doze off and wake, disoriented. Fear crawls into my belly, clawed and terrible. My thoughts have to push through a fog of it.

And yet they come. I am afflicted with the memory of kissing Oak. Whenever I recall what I did, I wince with embarrassment. What must he think of me, to have thrown myself at him? And why kiss me in return, except to keep me docile?

Then comes the memory of Hyacinthe urging me to come with him, warning me I wouldn’t be safe.

And again and again, I hear my unmother saying my name.

When the grind of the stone and the creaking of the hinges comes, I feel like a cornered animal, eager to strike. I shove the phone back into my pocket and stand, brushing myself off.

It’s the rose-haired knight, Revindra. “You’re to come and be questioned.”

I say nothing, but when she reaches out to grab my arm, I hiss in warning.

“Move,” she tells me, shoving my shoulder. “And remember how much pleasure it will give me if you disobey.”

I walk into the hall, where two more knights are waiting. They march me to an audience chamber where Queen Annet sits on a throne covered in powdery white moths, each one fluttering its wings a little, giving the whole thing the effect of a moving carpet. She is dressed in simpler black than she was when I saw her last, but Oak is in the same clothes, as though he hasn’t slept. His hands are clasped behind him. Tiernan stands at his side, his face like stone.

I realize how used to seeing Oak’s easy smile I am, now that he no longer wears it. A bruise rests beneath one of his eyes.

I think of him staggering back from the ogre’s blow, blood on his teeth, looking as though he was waiting for another hit.

“You stole from me.” Annet’s eyes seem to glint with barely concealed rage. I imagine that losing a mortal and a merrow was embarrassing enough, not to mention losing Hyacinthe, whom she had practically bullied Oak into letting her keep. She must especially mislike being humiliated in front of the heir to the High Court, even if I have given her an excuse to delay him a little longer. Still, she cannot make any legitimate claim that he was a party to what I did.

At least I don’t think she can.

If Revindra is angry with me, Annet’s rage will be far greater and much more deadly.

“Do you deny it?” the queen continues, looking at me with the expression of a hunting hawk ready to plunge toward a rat.

I glance at Oak, who is watching me with a feverish intensity. “I can’t,” I manage. I am trembling. I bite the inside of my cheek to ground myself in pain that I cause. This feels entirely too familiar, to wait for punishment from a capricious ruler.

“So,” the Unseelie queen says. “It seems you conspire with the enemies of Elfhame.”

I will not let her put that on me. “No.”

“Then tell me this: Can you swear to being loyal to the prince in all ways?”

I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out. My gaze goes to Oak again. I feel a trap closing in. “No one could swear to that.”

“Ahhh,” says Annet. “Interesting.”

There has to be an answer that won’t implicate me further. “The prince doesn’t need Hyacinthe, when he has me.”

“It seems I have you,” Queen Annet says, making Oak look at her sideways.

“Won’t he go immediately to Lady Nore and tell her everything we plan?” asks Oak, speaking for the first time. I startle at the sound of his voice.

I shake my head. “He swore an oath to me.”

Queen Annet looks at the prince. “Right under your nose, not only does your lady love take him from you, but uses him to build her own little army.”

My cheeks heat. Everything I say just makes what I’ve done sound worse. Much, much worse. “It was wrong to lock Hyacinthe up like that.”

“Who are you to tell your betters what is right or wrong?” demands Queen Annet. “You, traitorous child, daughter of a traitorous mother, ought to be grateful you were not turned into a fish and eaten after your betrayal of the High Court.”

I bite my lip, my sharp teeth worrying the skin. I taste my own blood.

“Is that really why you did it?” Oak asks, looking at me with a strange ferocity.

I nod once, and his expression grows remote. I wonder how much he hates that I was called his lady love.

“Jack of the Lakes says that you were to escape with Hyacinthe,” the queen goes on. “He was very eager to tell us all about it. Yet you’re still here. Did something go wrong with your plan, or have you remained to commit further betrayal?”

I hope Jack of the Lakes’ pond dries up.

“That’s not true,” I say.

“Oh?” says Annet. “Didn’t you mean to escape, too?”

“No,” I say. “Never.”

She leans forward on her throne of moths. “And why is that?”

I look at Oak. “Because I have my own reasons to go on this quest.”

Queen Annet snorts. “Brave little traitor.”

“How did you persuade Jack to help you?” Oak asks, voice soft. “Did he truly do it for the game piece? I would have paid him more silver than that to tell me what you intended.”

“For his pride,” I say.

Oak nods. “All my mistakes are coming home to me.”

“And the mortal girl?” asks Queen Annet. “Why interfere with her fate? Why the merrow?”

“He was dying without water. And Gwen was only trying to save her lover.” I may be in the wrong by the rules of Faerie, but when it comes to Gwen, at least, I am right by any other measure.

“Mortals are liars,” the Unseelie queen says with a snort.

“That doesn’t mean everything they say is a lie,” I return. My voice shakes, but I force myself to keep speaking. “Do you have a boy here, a musician, who has not returned to the mortal world in days, and yet through enchantment believes far less time has passed?”

“And if I have?” Queen Annet says, as close to an admission as I am likely to get. “Liar or no, you will take her place. You have wronged the Court of Moths, and we will have it out of your skin.”

I shiver all over, unable to stop myself.

Oak’s gaze goes to the Unseelie queen, his jaw set. Still, when he speaks, his voice is light. “I’m afraid you can’t have her.”

“Oh, can’t I?” asks Queen Annet in the tone of someone who has murdered most of her past lovers and is prepared to murder again if provoked.

His grin broadens, that charming smile, with which he could coax ducks to bring their own eggs to him for his breakfast. With which he could make delicate negotiations over a prisoner seem like nothing more than a game. “As annoyed as you may be over the loss of Hyacinthe, it is I who will be inconvenienced by it. Wren may have stolen him from your prisons, but he was still my prisoner. Not to say that you weren’t a wronged party.” He shrugs apologetically. “But surely we could get you another mortal or merrow, if not something better.”

Honey-mouthed. I think of how he’d spoken to that ogre in the brugh, how he could have used this tone on him but didn’t. It appears to work on the Unseelie queen. She looks mollified, her mouth losing some of its angry stiffness.

It’s a frightening power to have a voice like that.

She smiles. “Let us have a contest. If you win, I return her and the kelpie. If you fail, I keep them both, and you as well, until such time as Elfhame ransoms you.”

“What sort of contest?” he asks, intrigued.

“I present you with a choice,” she tells him. “We can play a game of chance in which we have equal odds. Or you can duel my chosen champion and bet on your own skill.”

A strange gleam comes into his fox eyes. “I choose the duel.”

“And I shall fight in your stead,” Tiernan says.

Queen Annet opens her mouth to object, but Oak speaks first. “No. I’ll do it. That’s what she wants.”

I take a half step toward him. She must have heard of his poor performance the night before. He’s still got the bruise as evidence. “A duel isn’t a contest,” I say, cautioning. “It’s not a game.”

“Of course it is,” Oak replies, and I am reminded once again that he is used to being the beloved prince, for whom everything is easy. I don’t think he realizes this won’t be the polite sort of duel they fought in Elfhame, with plenty of time for crying off and lots of deference given. No one here will feign being overcome. “To first blood?”

“Hardly.” Queen Annet laughs, proving all I feared. “We are Unseelie. We want a bit more fun than that.”

“To the death, then?” he asks, sounding as though the idea is ridiculous.

“Your sister would have my head if you lost yours,” says Queen Annet. “But I think we can agree that you shall duel until one of you cries off. What weapon will you have?”

The prince’s hand goes to his side, where his needle of a sword rests. He puts his hand on the ornate hilt. “Rapier.”

“A pretty little thing,” she says, as though he proposed dueling with a hairpin.

“Are you certain it’s a fight you want?” Oak asks, giving Queen Annet a searching look. “We could play a different sort of game of skill—a riddle contest, a kissing contest? My father used to tell me that once begun, a battle was a living thing and no one could control it.”

Tiernan presses his mouth into a thin line.

“Shall we set this duel for tomorrow at dusk?” Queen Annet inquires. “That gives us both time to reconsider.”

He shakes his head, quelling her attempt at a delay. “Your pardon, but we are in a hurry to see the Thistlewitch, now more than ever. I’d like to have this fight and be on my way.”

At that, some of Queen Annet’s courtiers smile behind their hands, although she does not.

“So sure of winning?” she asks.

He grins, as though in on the joke despite it being at his expense. “Whatever the outcome, I would hasten it.”

She regards him as one would a fool. “You will not even take the time to don your armor?”

“Tiernan will bring it here,” he says, nodding toward the knight. “Putting it on won’t take long.”

Queen Annet stands and motions to her knight. “Then let us not detain you longer—Revindra, fetch Noglan and tell him to bring the slenderest and smallest sword he owns. Since the prince is in haste, we must make do with what he can find.”

Tiernan bends toward me. He lowers his voice so that only I can hear. “You should have left with Hyacinthe.”

I look down at my feet, at the boots that the Court of Moths gave me for the prince’s sake. If I were to reach up to my head, I know I would be able to feel the braid he wove into my hair. If he dies, it will be my fault.

It is not long before the hall is filled with spectators. Watching the heir to Elfhame bleed will be a rare treat.

As Tiernan helps Oak into his scale-mail shirt, the crowd parts for an ogre I instantly recognize. The one that punched Oak twice the night before. He’s grinning, walking into the room with insufferable swagger. He looms over the spectators in his leather-and-steel chest plate, his heavy pants tucked into boots. His arms are bare. His lower canines press into his top lip. This must be Noglan.

He bows to his queen. Then he sees me.

“Hello, morsel,” he says.

I dig my fingers into my palm.

His gaze goes to the prince. “I guess I didn’t hit you hard enough last time. I can remedy that.”

Queen Annet claps her hands. “Clear some space for our duel.”

Her courtiers arrange themselves in a wide circle around an empty patch of packed earth.

“You don’t have to do this,” I whisper to Oak. “Leave me. Leave Jack.”

He gives me a sidelong look. His face is grave. “I can’t.”

Right. He needs me for his quest to save his father. Enough to make himself kiss me. Enough to bleed to keep me.

Oak strides to a place opposite where the ogre has chosen to stand. The ogre jests with a few folks in the eager, bloodthirsty crowd—I can tell because they laugh, but I am too far to hear what he says.

I think of Oak’s father, who I saw in war councils. Mostly, his eyes went past me, as though I were like one of the hunting hounds that might lounge under a table, hoping to have bones tossed to them. But there was a night when he saw me sitting in a cold corner, worrying at my restraints. He knelt down and gave me the cup of hot spiced wine he had been drinking, and when he rose, he touched the back of my head with his large, warm hand.

I’d like to tell Oak that Madoc isn’t worth his love, but I don’t know if I can.

The cat-headed lady pushes herself to the front and offers Oak her favor, a gauzy handkerchief. He accepts it with a bow, letting her tie it around his arm.

Queen Annet holds a white moth on her open palm.

“If he’s hurt…,” Tiernan tells me, not bothering to finish the threat.

“When the moth takes flight, the duel shall begin,” the queen says.

Oak nods and draws his blade.

I am struck by the contrast of his gleaming golden mail, the sharpness of his rapier, the hard planes of his body with the softness of his mouth and amber eyes. He scrapes one hoofed foot on the packed earth of the floor, moving into a fighting stance, turning to show his side to his opponent.

“I borrowed a toothpick,” Noglan the ogre calls, holding up a sword that looks small in his hand but is far larger than what the prince wields. Despite Oak’s height, the ogre is at least a foot taller and three times as wide. Muscles cord his bare arms as though rocks are packed beneath his skin.

At that moment, I see something waver in the prince’s eyes. Perhaps he finally realizes the danger he’s in.

The moth flutters upward.

Oak’s expression changes, neither smiling nor grim. He looks blank, empty of emotion. I wonder if that’s how he appears when he’s scared.

The ogre strides across the circle, holding his thin sword like a bat. “Don’t be shy, boy,” he says. “Let’s see what you’ve got.” Then he swings his blade toward Oak’s head.

The prince is fast, ducking to the side and thrusting the point of his rapier into the ogre’s shoulder. When Oak pulls it free, Noglan roars. A dribble of blood trickles over the ogre’s bicep.

The crowd sucks in a collective breath. I am stunned. Was that a lucky shot?

But I cannot continue to believe that when Oak spins to slash across the ogre’s belly, just below his chest plate. The prince’s movements are precise, controlled. He’s faster than anyone I’ve seen fight.

There’s a gleam of wet pink flesh. Then Noglan crashes to the floor, knocking other faeries out of his way. There are screams from the spectators, along with astonished gasps.

The prince steps to the other side of the circle. “Don’t get up,” he warns, a tremor in his voice. “We can be done with this. Cry off.”

But Noglan pushes himself to his feet, snorting in pain. There is a bloodstain growing on his pants, but he ignores it. “I am going to eviscerate—”

“Don’t,” the prince says.

The ogre runs at Oak, slashing with his sword. The prince turns the slim rapier so that it slides straight up the blade, the sharp point sinking into the ogre’s neck.

Noglan’s hand goes to his throat, blood pooling between his fingers. I can see when the light goes out of his eyes, like a torch thrown into the sea. He slumps to the floor. The crowd roars, disbelief on their faces. The scent of death hangs heavily in the air.

Oak wipes his bloody blade against his glove and sheaths it again.

Queen Annet would have heard the story of Oak not defending himself against Noglan. She’d come to the same conclusion that I had, that there was no fight in him. That there was nothing sinister hidden behind Oak’s easy smile. That he was the coddled prince of Faerie he seemed, spoiled by his sisters, doted on by his mother, kept in the dark regarding his father’s schemes.

I had supposed he might not even know how to use his sword. He’d acted the fool, that his enemies might believe he was one.

How could I have forgotten that he’d been weaned on strategy and deception? He was a child when murders over the throne began, and yet not so young that he didn’t remember. How had I not considered that his father and sister would have been his tutors in the blade? Or that if he was a favorite target of assassins, he might have had reason to learn to defend himself?

Queen Annet’s expression is grim. She expected this match to go her way, with Noglan knocking around the prince, her honor restored, and us imprisoned long enough for her to get a message from her contacts at the High Court.

Tiernan turns a fierce look on me and shakes his head. “I hope you’re pleased with what you wrought.”

I am not sure what he means. Oak is clearly unharmed.

Seeing my expression, his only grows angrier. “Oak was never taught to fight any way but to kill. He doesn’t know any elegant parries. He cannot show off. All he can do is deal death. And once he starts, he doesn’t stop. I’m not sure he can.”

A shiver goes through me. I remember the way his face went blank and the awfulness of his expression when he saw Noglan spread out on the ground, as though surprised by what he had done.

“Long, I wished for a child.” Queen Annet’s gaze goes to me again, then back to Oak. The shock seems to be wearing off, leaving her seeing that she must speak. “Now that one comes, I hope mine will do as much for me as you do for your sire. It pleases me to see a Greenbriar with some teeth.”

I assume that last is a dig at the High King, well known for leaving the fighting to his wife.

“Now, Lady Suren, I promised to return you to the prince, but I don’t recall promising you’d be alive when I handed you over.” Then the Unseelie queen smiles without amusement. “I understand you like riddles, having solved so many in my prisons. So let us have one more contest of skill. Answer, or suffer the riddle’s fate and leave Prince Oak with only your corpse: Tell a lie and I will behead you. Tell me the truth and I will drown you. What is the answer that will save you?”

“Queen Annet, I caution you. She is no longer yours to toy with,” Oak says.

But her smile does not dim. She waits, and I am without any choice but to play her cruel little game.

Despite my mind having gone blank.

I take a shuddery breath. Queen Annet posited that there was a solution to the riddle, but it’s an either-or situation. Either drowning or beheading. Either lying or truth. Two very bad outcomes.

But if the truth results in drowning and a lie results in beheading, then I have to find a way to use one of those against her.

I am tired and hurting. My thoughts are in knots. Is this one of those chicken-or-egg questions, a trap to seal my doom? If I were to choose drowning and it’s the truth, then she’d have to do it. Which means beheading is the fate of a liar. So…

“I must say, ‘You will behead me,’” I tell her. Because if she does it, then I am a truth-teller and she ought to have drowned me. There’s no way to execute me properly.

I let out a sigh of relief—since there is an answer, whatever she might have wanted to do, she must now let me go.

Queen Annet gives a tight smile. “Oak, take your traitor with the blessings of the Court of Moths.” As he takes a step toward me, she continues. “You may think that Elfhame will look ill on my attempts to keep you here, but I promise you that your sister would like it far less well to find I’d let you leave with Lady Suren, only to discover she sliced open your throat.”

Oak winces.

Annet notes his reaction. “Exactly.” Then she turns away with a swirl of her long black skirts, one hand on her gravid belly.

“Come,” the prince commands me. A muscle in his jaw twitches, as though he’s clenching his teeth too hard.

It would be safer if I hated him. Since I cannot, perhaps it is good that he now hates me.

They release Jack of the Lakes outside of the hill. His face is bruised. He slinks toward us, swallowing any witty comments. He goes to his knees before Oak, reminding me uncomfortably of Hyacinthe when he swore to me.

Jack says nothing, only bowing so low that his forehead touches Oak’s hoof. The prince is still clad in his armor. The golden mail glitters, making him seem both royal and remote.

“I am yours to punish,” says the kelpie.

Oak reaches out a hand and cups it lightly over Jack’s head, as though offering a benediction.

“My debt to you is paid, and yours to me,” Oak says. “We will owe each other nothing going forward, save friendship.”

I wonder at his kindness. How can he mean it when he is so angry with me?

Jack of the Lakes rises. “For the sake of your friendship, prince, I would carry you to the ends of the earth.”

Tiernan snorts. “Since Hyacinthe spirited off Damsel Fly, maybe you should take him up on his offer.”

“It is tempting,” Oak says, a half smile on his face. “And yet, I think we will make our own way from here.”

I study the tops of my boots, avoiding eye contact with absolutely everyone.

“If you change your mind, you have only to call on me,” says the kelpie. “Wheresoever you are, I will come.”

Then Jack transforms into a horse, all mossy black and sharp-toothed. As he rides off into the waning afternoon, despite everything, I am sorry to see him go.